Friday, June 29, 2007

The ongoing Deadspin tussle

It started innocently enough with a post on Stop Mike Lupica, asking why some blogs or outright sports sites get more love from Deadspin.com than others.

When I read the headline on Ballhype.com, I pretty much expected a tongue-in-cheek article, probably in the same vein as the title, "Who has been buying Will Leitch drinks?" It hasn't been that easy.

Well, some of the writers involved as examples of sub-par posts that Deadspin chose to run with took offense and - as happens more often than not - the whole thing took on a life of its own with comments sections getting a little heated and this response from The Ghosts of Wayne Fontes.

Luckily, this site is still under everyone's radar, but for what it's worth, I'm coming down on the side of commenters like Tearjerk Spotter whose advice boils down to "Write better material."

In the course of a week, I've been tentatively declined for a stock photo site (iStock.com) for pictures that they would like to see retaken and I'm working on doing just that. While it stings that I feel my three sample shots were head and shoulders above some of the images I've seen there, I know that I'm also capable of better quality, so I'll go back to it with my camera and have a stronger showing in a week or so.

I've been pretty lucky in terms of the Deadspin love, with some shared link dump attention and a post of my very own (sigh) last week, which drove traffic here through the roof and gave me more confidence that I'm on the right track.

I've only been ignored once in the past by the New Yorkers, so it's a pretty hard to find fault with their selection process, but I'm also very careful about what I send them. When I'm just messing around, having fun at the expense of the White Sox or my pal Rondell White, I usually just keep that to myself or see what Ballhype's community thinks.

I don't get all bent out of shape when I send an e-mail and nothing goes up. While I don't think that all of Deadspin's decisions are winners, I do appreciate the fact that there are plenty of submissions headed to their inbox and that personal preference, what has been on the site recently, what the community is most likely to sink their teeth into in the comments section and even what type of a mood they're in when they check in on the link are all factors in what actually appears at their site.

At the risk of deepening the case against me as a Deadspin apologist or suck up, it does come down to those two words- their site.

Just as I will ignore some blogs here because I don't think they're very good or can appreciate what someone has to say, I don't like everything I read, either and make decisions based on my own set of standards.

There are also some posts that just aren't consistent with the style of this site or I flat out disagree with. In those cases you can make the decision to link to a site and rip away at what you see as their flawed logic, but I prefer to try and stay positive with regards to the blogging community as a whole.

In the meantime, I think the best advice is the same as was offered above - write better material.